This is one of my favorite essays. (Yeah I have favorite poems and essays….)

There was a time in my life when I was just so focused on “what’s next” “when I get the chance to …” “when this happens I’ll….” that I forgot to just enjoy the journey.
After cancer, I now make a point to always enjoy the journey.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails from coaching clients and friends that all sound the same — “When this happens I’ll be able to …. when that happens I’ll….”

I can remember being like that. Always looking forward. When..When..When…

Rachel gave me this poem shortly after we had started dating. 19 years later it still hangs on my office wall:

The Station
By Robert Hastings

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is a vision- an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent. We’re traveling by train and, from the windows. we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of city skyline and village halls.

But uppermost in our conscious minds is our final destination-for at a certain hour and on a given day, our train will pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving, and bands playing. And once that day comes, our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. So, restlessly, we pace the aisles, and count the miles, peering ahead, cursing the minutes for loitering, waiting, waiting, for the station,,

“Yes, when we reach the station that will be it,” we cry. “When we’re eighteen! When we buy that new 450 SL Mercedes! When we put the last kid through college! When we win that promotion! When we pay off the mortgage! When we retire! Yes, from that day on, like the hero and heroines of a child’s fairy tale, we will live happily ever after.

Sooner or later, however, we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The journey is the joy.

The station is an illusion- it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday’s a memory; tomorrow’s a dream. Yesterday belongs to history; tomorrow belongs to God. Yesterday’s a fading sunset; tomorrow a faint sunrise. So, shut the door on yesterday and throw the key away, for only today is there light enough to live and love. It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. Rather, it’s regret over yesterday and fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are the twin thieves who rob us of that Golden Treasure we call today, this tiny strip of light between the two nights.

“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24, “This is a day the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars. Laugh more and cry less. Go barefoot more oftener. Eat more ice cream. Ride more merry go rounds. Watch more sunsets. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

Here’s a little ‘quiz’ that my TKD instructor taught me years ago. It’s about fighting and apparently no top fighter ever gave a different answer. It ties in with the mindset of success.

“Picture two fighters engaged in combat. After a long tough battle, the one who has been slightly dominant catches the other in a choke hold and begins to tighten his hold.

What would you do in that situation?”

Every champion fighter answered the same…

-“I’d keep squeezing until the other guy tapped out or went out!”

You see, a champion fighter just cannot picture that he (or she) is not winning the fight. It’s inconceivable to them that they wouldn’t succeed. They feel that success is an inevitable conclusion. They don’t lose. Ever. Not even for a second.

Most people instantly picture themselves as the one being choked. They immediately associate themselves with losing.

The champions couldn’t even fathom that not winning was even an option.

This is the mindset that you need when you start training, start a new diet, want to burn fat and lose weight, start a business venture, or begin anything. Expect success to the point that anything but, is impossible for you to even imagine.

All those cliches are true: ‘Where the mind goes everything follows’. ‘If you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right’.

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them”
Bruce Lee

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Yesterday I talked about Progress. Today I want to address progress in terms of body composition improvements.

I got the above graph from Alan Aragon. It represents exactly what happens in the long term when trying to change body composition either yourself or with clients. Plateaus are necessary for our survival — they occur because of two causes – psychological adaptation, and physiological adaptation.

You can see by the graph that each plateau includes a period of no progress, followed by a slight “sliding back” before you progress again. Additionally – each subsequent plateau occurs at a faster rate than the previous one, and is usually a smaller progression each time. This phase length varies from novice to experienced trainees. Novices can likely progress on the same program for far longer than an experienced trainee – although changing the routine can be useful psychologically.

The key to “breaking” plateaus is to manipulate your nutrition and exercise programs SLIGHTLY. A subtle change (e.g. switching from the bike to the treadmill in your cardio workouts) is often enough to ‘kick start’ progress. The progression of a single variable like load used in an exercise can keep forcing adaptations even when other variables remain the same.

A good coach is always trying to stay one step ahead of any plateaus – by manipulating the training variables to ensure continued progress. For example, in our fat loss programs one of the tools we use is to adjust the rep range every single workout (using undulating periodization) and change the exercises completely every 4 weeks. You could also change the load every workout, the nutrition program every four weeks, and also change the resistance training and energy system portions at the same rate. Basically a sixteen week program is a sequence of four, four-week programs, and can easily be adjusted to become a 24 week program for the beginner.

The bottom line is to remember that plateaus are not necessarily a bad thing. In actual fact, our ultimate goal IS a plateau – to reach a favorable body composition range and stay there.

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” – Herbert Simon

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We now live in the information age… you can buy a book on any subject you want and have it delivered by tomorrow. There are hundreds of thousands of websites on almost any topic you can think about. It’s amazing.

I get asked a lot – why so much conflicting advice on fitness/fat loss etc?

And honestly — when you get right down to it — I don’t think there really is that much conflicting advice – most good people agree on 90% of their topic. I think it’s that people lack the ability to FILTER good information from bad.

So in the information age — how do you filter information? I mean, at this point there is so much information available – that you NEED to filter out as much as you take on board.

It’s that simple. I’m sure that I miss out on “some” information by ignoring other sources — but I think it’s an acceptable trade off.

99 times out of 100 who will have the better information on strength training ?– a 19 year old who has only ever trained himself — or a professional coach with 19 years of full time experience?

Who knows more about marketing – a personal trainer or a direct response marketing expert with 30 years of experience in the field and a seven figure income from his results?

If you had cancer – would you prefer to consult with one of the top oncologists in the country – who makes a living fighting cancer and saving lives? Or would you listen to an internet based conspiracy theorist?

In today’s world, filtering information might be a more important skill than finding information.

“People who are cocky and arrogant say, “I know that” and move along. People who are confident and positive ask themselves, “How good am I at that?” and seek to improve” –Jeffrey Gitomer

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I got asked this question by one of my business coaching clients the other day and felt that it was a good one to include here:

Q: I’ve heard in a previous interview where you mention that billing ‘by the hour’ is irrelevant when it comes to training people. I just can’t get my head around this — how do you charge people and why isn’t time still a factor? Do you call the workouts “mini-sessions” or something?

A: When you want to travel cross country in the USA — you can choose a flight, or you can choose a bus right?

The bus takes way longer than a flight — but costs less. It’s not about the length of time — it’s about the destination — the result — and how it is delivered. In this case — it’s the REVERSE of billing by time — as the shortest time costs the most money.

A haircut? The barber or hairdresser completes the task and is paid by the task – not by how long it takes. A doctor? Does he or she charge you more if they talk to you for longer? Experts don’t get paid by the hour – they get paid by the result.

Back to training – where did an hour of training come from anyway? Is there a science journal out there that I don’t know about that showed an hour of training to be more effective than 50 minutes?

An hour is just a measure of time. What you are really doing within that hour is X number of sets of Y number of reps right? Let’s say you do 8 exercises, 3 sets of 10 reps each for 24 total sets and 240 total reps.

Then someone else hires you — and when designing their program you come up with 7 exercises, and 3 sets of 8 reps each. 21 total sets and 168 total reps.

Does the second client get a discount because they did “less”? Of course not. You are using a tool to deliver the result. If you design a perfect program that can be done in 45 minutes — do you add another 33% more work to fill in the time (and thereby move away from your perfect program)?

“You don’t get paid for the hour — you get paid for the value you bring to that hour”

I’d even go beyond that.

The lowest paid people in the world think that they get paid for the hour of work. That’s why they stay low paid. The guy who works at the grocery store thinks he’s getting paid for the hours he stands there. And until he changes that paradigm he’ll always be a low paid ‘by the hour’ worker.

More successful people think like Jim Rohn and they think they get paid for the value that they create within that time frame.

The most successful people understand that the time spent is irrelevant, it’s ONLY the value. So they no longer think in terms of time — and if they do — it’s in reverse — that getting the job done faster is worth more.

If I can deliver the perfect training program to get your result in 30 mins, and another coach needs an hour — am I not worth more? I can deliver the result in half the time that they can – I should be worth at least twice as much.

In training (and in most things – including business) the result is the ONLY thing that matters — designing programs or charging ‘by the hour’ is not thinking about value first. I actually pride myself on making the workouts no longer than they need to be. In my opinion doing one extra set is far worse than not doing enough.

So what do I call a 45 min training session?

Same as what I call a 35 min training session. A training session.

Write workouts that work and deliver results. Don’t write workouts to fill in a slot of time.

If you haven’t gained more information – then someone who did will eventually and unquestionably take a bite out of your business.

Because the one thing that is truer than ever — is that things are changing fast.

I recently read something from a fitness coach who claimed that most seminars are a waste of time and he doesn’t read books. Do you think he’s growing as a professional when his entire educational input is just his own experiences? Doubtful.

Open your business in competition with a guy like that, keep educating yourself and you’ll inevitably succeed. Because over the long term, guaranteed – he’s going to fail.